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Books: Straight Jacket: How to Be Gay and Happy by Matthew Todd

The Orlando massacre has made this gay polemic even more timely

Review by Louis Wise

June 26 2016, 12:01am, The Sunday Times

Out and about: the Pride in London parade, June 2015David Fisher/Rex Features

Matthew Todd’s book, a mix of memoir, self-help, polemic and case study, asks a simple question: are “gay people... as happy as they could be — and if not, why not?” We got a blunt answer to this two weeks ago in Orlando, where, in a hate-crime on a vast scale, Omar Mateen murdered 49 people because of their sexuality.

You might not see much of a link between the two. Likewise, you might ask why gay people aren’t “as happy as they could be”. LGBT people in Britain, after all, have more rights than ever before, not least the right to marry. They enjoy more visibility and respectability than at any other time. However, Todd’s book, which mostly focuses on the lives of gay…